Our current issue was a tough one to get out. First of all, it was centered around the deaths of three missionaries in Honduras. Two of them attended Tabernacle Baptist Church in Cartersville. In talking to the people there I saw how these two guys, Ric Mason and Perry Goad (Perry's on the left and Ric on the right), were not the type of church members to do nothing but keep a pew warm. They got out there. They were involved. They got their hands dirty.Perry had his own heating and air conditioning business, a venture that I learned he treated as an extension of ministry in itself. His technical skills helped the church through the television ministry – a position that isn't very noticeable until you either mess up ... or you're not there. On the Sunday after his death pastor Don Hattaway said that after services Perry would have to chase him throughout the halls of the church to pass off the DVD of that day's service so Hattaway's parents could have a copy of their son preaching ASAP.
Ric had been known in Cartersville for years as owning a couple of eating joints, the last one being The Meating Place until he sold it. In addition to his work at Tabernacle, though, he was also the executive director for The Etowah Foundation, a group that provides grant money for students to go to college. Everyone seemed to have a memory of him and how he encouraged them to be involved in missions.
The most tragic thing about the loss of these two men is that they were solid family guys – the kind that you don't hear that much about. Service comes with a price, though we often don't equate that price with our lives. I never met either one of them, but every time the world loses men like these who are willing to set the bar a little bit higher, we all feel it.
